Genetic epidemiology and risk factors for brain tumors.

This report summarized current knowledge and findings relevant to environmental and genetic risk factors in brain tumors, with a particular focus on glioma. To date, the established risk factors for brain tumors are family history and ionizing radiation exposure; whereas there is an inverse association between tumors and other factors such as history of allergies, atopic conditions, chickenpox, and varicella zoster virus infection. To identify inherited genetic variants impacting susceptibility of brain tumors, large scale familial linkage-scan pedigree analysis, population-based candidate genes, and genome-wide association study were performed. More recently, next generation exome and whole genome sequencing studies were also conducted.